Track limits penalty damages championship leader Rob Collard’s qualifying

Rob Collard will have a tough task ahead to maintain his championship lead on Sunday after qualifying 18th on the grid for the first race of the day at Knockhill. Collard’s qualifying result was thanks in part to the race officials deciding to delete the BMW driver’s best lap due to a track limits violation during qualifying.

Collard, who leads the standings by three points over team-mate Sam Tordoff, will start from the midfield for the second race weekend in a row after qualifying in 16th position two weeks’ ago at Snetterton.

“I’m very disappointed to qualify 18th today,” said Collard. “Unfortunately my best lap was disallowed for exceeding track limits by the tiniest amount when I ran wide at Turn 7, and I then had to be pretty cautious for the rest of the session, which made it tough to improve.

“I then watched lots of other drivers going off the track on several occasions and not being penalised, which is tough to accept. We have work to do on the car for the races, but Knockhill has always been a good track for me and I’ve won here five times with WSR and I still think it’s possible to score some good points.”

Tordoff meanwhile put his BMW third on the grid behind the Subaru Levorg of Jason Plato and the Toyota Avensis of Tom Ingram, despite carrying 66kg of success ballast courtesy of his championship position, and has the best opportunity to retake the lead of the championship from his team-mate.

“I think we can all be really pleased with third on the grid,” said Tordoff.

“I’d have been happy anyway to be underneath last year’s pole position time, but to do it with 66kg of success ballast is even better and shows what a strong package the BMW is around Knockhill. If I were being really picky I could be disappointed to have been pipped for pole by three hundredths of a second, but I’m not. If you’d told me I’d qualify third, I’d have bitten your hand off.”